Amazon.com will begin selling Kindle – a sleek, thin electronic reader that connects wirelessly to the Internet at broadband speeds and allows users to download e-books, or subscribe to magazines and blogs directly from Amazon.com. Wireless functionalities, based on cell phone broadband technology EVDO, are built into the 10-ounce, thin white device. Kindle is designed to be simpler to use and more comfortable to hold than similar devices. You can download contents without a computer (Sony e-book reader needs a PC) and it takes less than a minute for a full-length book to download. It can carry about 200 books downloaded from Amazon.com at about $10 for new releases. Like a book, the device’s screen is not back-lit and uses electronic ink to mimic paper. Similar Sony e-book reader employs similar technology, but does not include wireless access. The greatest advantage over Sony is that Kindle store already has 88,000 volumes versus Sony’s 20,000. A year of the Wall Street Journal in print is $249 versus $9.99 a month ($120 a year) via Kindle.
The great news is that Kindle is open for free content and you can load any file you want in a couple of formats including plain text and HTML. You can email those to your Kindle for a dime or load them free using a USB cable or SD memory card. Whatever you write yourself or get from friends can go right on the Kindle. It’s open for reading. The battery-operated Amazon Kindle will sell for $399.
